On March 15th, it was reported that, unlike other new automotive companies, NIO has not established the position of CTO (Chief Technology Officer).
Recently, during NIO’s Longevity Battery Strategy Communication Meeting, Li Bin, NIO’s chairman, spoke for the first time about the reason behind not appointing a CTO:
Li Bin stated that in the core areas of smart electric vehicles, NIO should invest in research and development. Last year, NIO announced that it would undertake full-stack in-house development in 12 areas, including battery systems, electric drive systems, operating systems, intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, etc.
Organizationally, initially, NIO’s R&D department was divided into three major sectors: intelligence, electric, and automotive. Any cross-departmental decision-making had to go from one high mountain to another.
To enhance inter-departmental collaboration, starting from 2019, Li Bin reorganized the technical departments, turning the three mountains into dozens of smaller hills, with over a dozen R&D leaders reporting directly to him.
NIO has not appointed a CTO, and according to Li Bin, this is because finding an all-capable CTO is very challenging, "There’s no need to find a CTO to be the scapegoat for projects that don’t meet expectations."
It is reported that NIO currently has a full-stack in-house development layout in all core systems of electric vehicles, such as the whole vehicle domain operating system SkyOS, the laser radar master control chip "Yang Jian", Tianxing chassis, and the 150-degree semi-solid-state battery pack, all of which are proprietary technologies.
